The Bottom Line: A return to form that will thrill John Wells series fans and attract plenty of new ones.
When you’ve written what is arguably the very best post-911 espionage novel, which Alex Berenson did with The Faithful Spy, sequels can be a rocky road. After all, the fate of the western world was at stake in Berenson’s debut, as was Wells’ identity. Subsequent books, however, saw Wells settle in a relationship, get a dog, and at times, carry a single plotline over the course of two books. You have to have a character arc, right?
There should be no complaints this time around, as Wells returns to his roots. Â But instead of the Taliban, Well is focused on ISIS.
Evidence is mounting that someone high up in the CIA is doing the unthinkable—passing messages to ISIS, alerting them to planned operations. Finding out the mole’s identity without alerting him, however, will be very hard, and to accomplish it, Wells will have to do something he thought he’d left behind forever. He will have to reassume his former identity as an al Qaeda jihadi, get captured, and go undercover to befriend an ISIS prisoner in a secret Bulgarian prison.
Many years before, Wells was the only American agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda, but times have changed drastically. The terrorist organizations have multiplied: gotten bigger, crueler, more ambitious and powerful.
Wells knows it may well be his death sentence. But there is no one else.
A must for any Alex Berenson fan.
